


Amongst the Amber Stars

by XaykWolf



Category: RWBY
Genre: F/F, Mass Effect AU, Now I'm Going To Have To Replay These Monsters Of Games..., oh god what have I done?
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-04
Updated: 2020-06-04
Packaged: 2021-03-04 01:01:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,050
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24535063
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/XaykWolf/pseuds/XaykWolf
Summary: Written initially for Bumbleby Week 2020, day 4 (AU day). It's the Mass Effect AU no one asked for except for the ghost-of-hyperfixations-past that haunts my dreams.It's 2186 CE, and Yang Xiao Long is a simple, humble mineral harvester, along with her sister and friends. Rebuilding Earth is an all-hands-on-deck endeavor, even for their tiny ramshackle crew. It's enough, or so Yang tells herself. Still, a piece of her itches for more, and on a desolate and snowy planet, things get a lot easier (and a lot more complicated).
Relationships: Blake Belladonna/Yang Xiao Long
Comments: 6
Kudos: 17





	Amongst the Amber Stars

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote most of this chapter in a whirlwind, and I know if I don't post it now this AU will never see the light of day. So I'm really hoping y'all like it enough to pester me to finish it, cuz Mass Effect is one of my previous hyperfixations, and I'd like a completed Bee AU fic to pay homage to it. Hopefully it won't be more than a couple/few chapters...shouldn't be too serious...right? 
> 
> Oh, and while you don't have to have played the original Mass Effect trilogy, there ARE SPOILERS scattered throughout, and a pretty major one is right out of the gate. So it's recommended, unless you're okay with spoilers, then it's mostly random references that might not make sense.
> 
> Enjoy!

Yang breathes heavily through the respirator on her mask, gazing out at the vast canvas of stars and systems in the night sky above her. Out here it's hard to remember why she's even here in the first place.

In the aftermath of an invasion by the massive organic machines known as the "Reapers", Earth officials had reached out to all scrappers with a friendlier hand than usual. With the jump in need for resources to rebuild major cities, even lowly mineral farmers were suddenly important.

Not that Yang's salty about it.

Still, it means her trips to the edges of dark space are state-sanctioned and funded. There's also a guarantee of credits waiting for her back home, instead of haggling on the Citadel with her favorite grumpy Volus.

But then, here on some godforsaken rock, sometimes she forgets not to look up. She forgets that it makes her wanderlust crazy, makes her want to ditch everything and leave it all behind to drift amongst the stars. She could do it; she's been scavenging for Eezo since she was old enough for Tai to argue for bringing her along on his own forays.

(Summer hadn't been pleased, but it was three-against-one when Qrow brought his own opinions in.)

(Well, two-and-a-half-against-one...Yang's opinion had only counted for half, apparently...)

Yang suppresses the urge to mentally calculate what it would take to be a drifter, hearing the crunch of feet on foreign snow.

"Hey."

"Hey, Weiss. I know, I know. I'll get going in one more minute."

Weiss shifts behind her, just outside of her periphery. "You know this planet has a lot of reported blizzards. We can't afford to lose comms."

" _I know_ ," Yang replies with a sigh. And there goes her sense of calm. Whatever.

Yang looks around, spying a mountain range within driving distance, and clicks on her radio. "Hey Ruby, can you regroup on our location? We've got some potential sites."

"On my way!" As usual, Ruby's a little too loud over the comm, but it's fine. She's the fastest Mako driver to have evaded human Alliance Navy recruitment, and she'll be coming over the nearest snow berm in 3...2...

Snow explodes from where the wheels touch down, and Yang's just far enough away that she doesn't get splattered. Weiss, on the other hand...

"RUBY ROSE!"

"SORRY!"

Yang laughs.

She and Weiss pile into the vehicle, and Yang points out their destination. With much bickering between Ruby and Weiss about which method to take (Ruby wants to head straight up the mountain, while Weiss wants to take the natural sloping switchbacks up), they reach a good survey point. Yang clambers out first, eager to find mineral mounds and get back to the ship. Anything to escape the urge to detach from obligations. She has too many she'd be leaving behind...

From her vantage point, Yang can see down the other side of the mountain. There's a wide stretch of flat land and undisturbed snow, probably left over from the last blizzard.

"Ooooooo, can we do donuts on that?! I mean, after we fill our quota?" Ruby's found her way out of the Mako and away from Weiss.

"Are you in _sane?_ No!" Weiss calls from the vehicle hatch as Ruby lets out a noise of dismay.

"Remember how I got that weird scar on my shoulder blade?" Yang offers more civilly.

Ruby nods. "You said it was from a demon centipede?"

Weiss scoffs. Yang ignores her.

"Yeah, they're called Thresher Maws. And they really like that terrain." She points at the valley.

Ruby pouts. "Oh... So I'm guessing that's a trap out there, then."

"A trap?" Weiss says, hopping down from the vehicle.

"Yeah," Ruby replies, pointing down to the middle of the flatland.

Yang squints. Sure enough, there's a pile of rubble, about 100 meters out. It looks like there's an overturned vehicle in there, and some sort of energy field pillar. Of course Ruby would be able to see it, being their handy sniper. Yang prefers a more...direct approach, which is hard when fighting a ten-story tall demon centipede. With acid. And mandibles longer than her whole body.

"Best to avoid it, then," Yang says. "None of us are equipped to deal with it, and the Mako is low on bullets since we couldn't restock at the Citadel last time."

"I said I was sorry," Ruby mutters.

"Wasn't an accusation," Yang hedges. "Just a statement of fact. Besides, that one's definitely on Nora."

She and Ruby laugh.

Weiss rolls her eyes. "Can we just get started? I'm expecting a call from Winter tonight, and I'd really like not to miss it."

"Hold on," Ruby says, holding up a hand then pointing back out at the pile in the field.

Yang squints again.

There's a figure, small as an ant from this distance, running from the rubble towards the mountain. They're sprinting full-tilt, probably knowing the danger.

Yang's heart drops to her stomach. The stranger isn't going to make it, there's no way.

Sure enough, Yang feels a rumbling from the ground, faint this far away but still present. Still ominous with implication. Then, 70 meters from the base of the mountain, dirt and slush erupt. A long, spiky head juts out, snaking until it's towering overhead. The running figure falls over, tripped up by the rolling ground behind them.

"Yang, what are you doing?" Ruby yells.

Because despite all sense of logic, Yang is charging down the mountain. In ten seconds, she's nearing the base when she taps into her neural implant. It burns ever so slightly as she aims at the Thresher, using gravity-warping biotics to propel her body forward like a human missile. It's about 10 meters away that her brain catches up to her. And it's about 5 meters away that she panics. What in the hell _is_ she doing?

She slams into the face of the Thresher Maw, narrowly missing the mandibles. It recoils with a screech, and Yang plummets to the ground. The impact blows out her biotic barrier but she's otherwise fine.

Well, she's prone on her back, so not _fine_ , but she'll take any "W" she can get.

"Are you CRAZY?" the stranger yells, but Yang can't respond. The Thresher has its bearings again and is rearing back to give Yang a symmetrical scar on her other shoulder blade (and the rest of her). She flinches, waiting for the strike.

Her stomach flips as the rest of her floats, and then she's rocketing toward the stranger, Pulled by familiar biotics.

So _that's_ what that feels like...

She's mentally apologizing to Tai for all the times she's surprised him with a Pull when she collides with the stranger. Yang's rattling off grateful words as she drags herself to her knees.

The Thresher Maw hits the ground where Yang had lain, screeching in anger. Yang's heart, still flipping from the Pull, drops to her stomach as she watches it yank its mandibles free. She turns to the stranger to yell for them to run.

She's the most gorgeous woman Yang's ever seen. Her helmet is off, and Yang marvels at dark hair and bright amber eyes longer than she knows is wise.

Her comm crackles. "Yang Xiao Long, get the FUCK out of there!"

Weiss is cussing. Crap, Weiss is cussing, it must be _bad_.

Yang stands, pulling the stranger with her, and then she's taking off as fast as she can toward the mountain.

60 meters...50 meters...

Acid splatters the heel of her boots, hissing for a moment until her regenerating barrier extinguishes it. Yang yelps.

The primal part of her brain is screaming for them to keep running, but the "what does this button do?" part of her brain gives a quiet suggestion.

"Grab on!" Yang yells, and then without giving the stranger time to react, Yang picks her up and focuses. It's dumb, since she's never attempted this before, but...well, desperate times. The stranger shouts in indignation, but Yang's neural implant sparks hotter than usual, the burn drowning out the woman's words. And then they're off, rocketing through the air. 40 meters away from the mountain, then 30...

About 20 meters away from the base of the mountain, Yang's biotics give out, and they crash to the snow, skidding for another few meters. Yang's visor clouds with mud, but she's sure they're far enough away that the Thresher Maw will lose interest in them.

A rumbling signals its return underground. When Yang doesn't hear it resurface, she lets herself relax, head falling back to the ground with a splat. Yang heaves a sigh of relief.

"You're absolutely fucking insane, you know that?"

Yang wipes her helmet visor off and looks over at the stranger. She's covered in mud and snow, expression like a forcibly-bathed cat. That's when laughter finally bubbles up in Yang's chest, and once she starts, she can't stop. It turns in full-belly guffaws as the adrenaline fades from her bloodstream, and she rolls back and forth, unable to contain it. After a moment, the stranger starts laughing too, most likely in relief and waning adrenaline.

"You idiot!!!" Weiss snaps. She and Ruby are running from the mountain toward them, helmets off, both looking distinctly relieved, though Weiss's ears seems to be tinged red in outrage (fear tends to manifest that way in her) (not that Yang would know from...many terribly executed ideas...).

Yang turns to the stranger. "Here comes my lecture, just watch."

Yang sits up as Weiss and Ruby skid to a halt in front of them, Ruby dancing from foot to foot.

Weiss puffs up to the entirety of her 5 feet tall. "What the hell was that?! Are you trying to get yourself killed? Are you out of your mind? I swear, when we get ba-"

"THAT WAS AWESOME, SIS!" Ruby interrupts, leaping at Yang.

Yang barely has time to brace herself before she's back flat on the ground again. "Do you think we could try that too, some time? You went like 25 meters! I'm a little smaller, so we could probably do 30, well to start with, but I bet we could train you up to 40 or even 50! Oh and-"

"Who's this?" Weiss asks, exasperated and decidedly deflated from not finishing her reprimand.

The stranger finally speaks up. "I'm Blake, and you're all insane."

 _"Us?"_ Yang says incredulously. " _You're_ the one who tried to outrun a giant Thresher Maw!"

" _Both_ of us did," Blake points out, and Yang's breath dies in her lungs. She's not wrong...maybe she is insane.

Yang looks down at her armor, scratched and acid-splashed, with a wry smile. She pulls off her helmet to survey the damage to it, her hair falling out of the careful bun she put it in. It's a wonder it held up in the helmet at all during the chaos. She hears a sharp intake of breath from Blake, but no, that was probably the wind.

The wind...wait...

"Hey guys, not to spoil the fun, but..." Ruby points over Yang's shoulder. Purple-white clouds roll across the sky, moving slowly but steadily towards them.

"Ahh grapes." They're about to hear a lot of I-told-you-so's from Weiss, that's for sure.

"Think we can grab some minerals really fast so we don't return empty-handed?" Ruby asks, looking between the oncoming storm and the mountain.

Yang jumps to her feet. She feels like a whole bucket of suck, but there's nothing like a good rush against time to re-energize her. "Race you to the top? First one to five wins?"

Ruby digs her heels in. "You're on."

They're halfway to the mountain when Yang hears Blake ask Weiss, "Are they always like this?"

* * *

Ruby wins (barely, and only because she found a double on the way up, or so Yang argues).

It's a little cramped in the Mako with an extra body, but it's worth it when they're able to evacuate everyone back to the ship all at once.

Nora's the first to greet them when they dock.

"You look like HELL, what happened?" Yang hears from within the vehicle. Ruby gives a vague answer about outrunning storms, and Yang is grateful that she usually gets out last. There'll be explaining to do, and right now Yang just needs to catch her breath before facing an enthusiastic Nora.

Weiss climbs out next, and Yang hears her murmur something to Ren as she turns to Blake.

"It's not much, but it's home, and the people are only slightly crazy. You ready?"

"After that description? No." There's nothing on Blake's face to indicate sarcasm or not, so Yang gives her the best winning smile she's got.

"It'll be okay, I promise. C'mon!"

Jaune is still there when Yang pops her head up. "Hey, Weiss said you had a newcomer?"

"Possibly. She's got some wounds to attend to, but then after that it's up to her what she wants to do."

Yang peeks back down into the cockpit. "Jaune will get you patched up, and then I'm sure Ren's got something cooking. He's always got something ready by the time we get back from scouring a planet."

Food is apparently the magic word, because Blake all but pushes Yang out of the vehicle in her attempt to get out.

It's harder to get her to go with Jaune alone, so Yang ends up walking her all the way to the tiny makeshift medbay in the corner of the main deck. Blake's hesitation is understandable, though, once the armor starts coming off. It's dented and cracked in some places, and that's even without the damage from their little test of dual-human flight. Her clothing underneath is intact but just barely, and Yang thinks of the flipped vehicle in the rubble. With a cringe, Yang leaves and returns with a few articles of her own clothing.

While she and Jaune wait outside the door for Blake to get changed, Weiss marches up purposefully, already back in her civvies.

"Yang, can I talk to you for a moment?"

"Umm, I'd rather no-"

"Great!" Weiss grabs her wrist and drags her away.

Yang throws a "Pray for me!" before acquiescing to Weiss' pull. That's how she finds herself standing, still fully-armored, next to the thrumming engine with a glaring Weiss.

"What?" she asks incredulously.

"What in the hell were you _thinking_ , Yang? You could've died, and for a complete stranger! I don't care how pretty she is --oh don't give me that eye roll, why do you think I yelled at you through your comm? You're not subtle-- That's no reason to go Charging into almost certain death!"

Here's the lecture Ruby interrupted. Yang stares up and over at the engine core and refuses to meet Weiss' icy look.

"I don't know why I did it, okay? My body just moved on its own. I've got these awesome powers, and I'll be damned if I don't use them to help someone in danger."

"At the cost of your own life? Think about Ruby-"

"I do! I think about her every darn day!" Weiss has touched a nerve, and Yang can feel her face redden. "She's only the biggest reason I'm still here at all, or I'd be gone!"

Weiss' mouth opens and closes like a fish, speechless. It's that shock that has the anger seeping from Yang's head, and now she's thinking about what she just admitted. Crap...

"Look," Yang says, quieter. "I care about you all, all right? I just...find it hard to stay still sometimes. And whether you feel like it or not, scrounging for minerals for the Alliance feels an awful lot like standing still to me. I'm here for Ruby, and on some level I'm here for you too, and the rest of these hooligans. And that's good enough, or I really would be gone. So maybe I take a few extra risks along the way; it beats feeling bored."

It's Weiss' turn to stare at the engine core. She's silent for a while, and Yang is more than happy to give her the space to process.

"You'd tell us if you were leaving, right?" Weiss' voice is small, subdued in worry.

Yang puts a hand on her shoulder. "Promise. But I'm not lying, you guys are enough. I just need something exciting on top of things every now and then, you know?"

"Is that where you got the first Thresher scar from?"

Yang laughs. "No, that one involves Uncle Qrow, some diluted Ryncol, and a very stupid bet. Ask me again some other time and I might tell you. Just be glad he stopped drinking the stuff before you met us."

Weiss' lips twist in a reluctant smile. "He's still insufferable."

"You're just bitter that he can beat Winter's high score in the Armax Arena," Yang throws over her shoulder as she turns to head back to the medbay.

Following, Weiss scoffs. "What. Ever."

They arrive just as Jaune says, "That should about do it! Be careful with that rib for a while, just to give the medigel time to work its magic. Otherwise you're good to go!"

Blake slides down from the exam table, shiny places visible in patches on her face and arms where the medigel works on particularly dark bruises and deep scrapes.

Yang gives her a smile that promptly drops when Jaune looks at her with sadistic glee.

"Your turn, little miss juggernaut."

"I'm fine, Jaune, really."

A pressure on her shoulder, and a pauldron pops off.

Jaune's grin widens. "Thanks, Weiss."

Yang gasps exaggeratedly, turning. "Betrayal!"

"Yeah, and there's more where that came from if you don't listen to the man," Weiss retorts, fists firmly on her hips. Her eyes flick over Yang's shoulder, and Yang's about to ask why she's grinning too when her other pauldron pops off.

Yang spins back to see Blake twirling the metal between her hands, a spark of something in her eyes. It makes Yang's stomach do weird things. And she's not sure she likes the implications. So to distract herself she goes hammy, flinging her arms up in dismay, looking to the ceiling.

"Will no one save me from such treachery?"

With a smile Blake pokes her again, and her chest plate falls off. "Nope."

**Author's Note:**

> No, I will not be writing a scene where Yang cusses. Don't @ me.
> 
> I hope to finish this creature by the end of June. I've got a few major school things to take care of, and I'm moving, so no promises, but drop a comment to let me know your thoughts! :)


End file.
